THE

LIBERTARIAN

ENTERPRISE

Save America - Enforce the Bill of Rights

The first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution -- commonly known
as the Bill of Rights -- are the highest law of the land.

Over the 200 years it's been in force, certain people -- usually
politicians and bureaucrats who wanted more power and found the Bill
of Rights an inconvenient obstacle (exactly as it was intended to be)
-- have argued over its proper interpretation.

During the Lincoln, Wilson, and second Roosevelt Administrations, the
Bill of Rights was openly violated and even set aside, using an
ongoing war as a handy excuse. As a result, the size and power of
government grew at the expense of individual liberties which, for the
most part, were never given back even when the war was over. Similar
violations have been committed in the name of the War on Drugs.

However no legal provision exists for the suspension of the Bill of
Rights, in time of war or any other emergency. Any government
employee, elected or appointed, from policeman to President, who
violates it, no matter what justification he offers, is a criminal.

This claim may appear strange or trivial, until we count the cost of
such violations, and realize that the events of September 11, 2001
could never have happened if the rule of law -- the highest law of
the land -- had been fully enforced as the nation's Founders
intended.

If Constitutional limits on the power of government -- on the
President and Congress -- had been properly enforced, the kind of
interference typical of American foreign policy that has people
overseas hate us and want to kill us would have been impossible.

And if the Second Amendment had been enforced, the September 11
killers would have faced aircraft containing armed passengers and
would probably never have thought of trying to hijack those planes.

So far, the government's response to its own terrible failures of
September 11 has been to imitate Lincoln, Wilson, and Roosevelt, and
do its best to limit the freedom of Americans even further, passing
laws and creating regulations that violate nearly every one of the
first ten amendments and transform America into a police state.

And in a transparent and pathetic effort to look better in its
blundering, the government cites polls taken of a populace who have
been indoctrinated all their lives by establishment mass media and
the public schools -- and haven't the vaguest clue what their rights
are, or what's been done to them in war after war.

The fact is, crime of any kind, whether it kills six people or six
thousand, represents a diffuse threat, and can only be countered with
a diffuse defense. Individuals must be free to act -- as individuals
-- against it. Only the most stringent, energetic, and enthusiastic
Bill of Rights enforcement can guarantee that freedom to act.

Those Founding Founders who wrote the Bill of Rights made sure it was
written clearly, in plain language. They meant it to be understood by
everybody, not just lawyers and judges -- working for politicians and
bureaucrats -- attempting to "explain" it all away.

There is only one correct way to interpret the Bill of Rights. Put
yourself in the Founding Fathers' place: if you had just finished a
long, bloody shooting war against the biggest, most violently
ruthless empire on the planet -- and surprised yourself and everybody
else by winning it -- and the last thing you wanted was to find
yourself, your children, or their children under the heel of tyranny
again, exactly what would you have intended the Bill of Rights to
mean?

Is it possible you would have given government -- which the Founders
saw as the natural enemy of human freedom, dignity, and hope -- the
power to suspend the Bill of Rights? Or would you have wanted those
vital, life-giving rights protected by a new kind of government whose
only excuse for existing was to enforce them?

The Bill of Rights is what America is all about. Without it, we'd be
just like any other country with too much government. We'd be like
China, or Russia, or Germany without the Bill of Rights. As somebody
said, we'd be the world's biggest banana republic.

Every problem America ever had could have been solved by enforcing
the Bill of Rights. Every problem America has now could be solved by
enforcing the Bill of Rights. Every problem America will ever have
will be solved by enforcing the Bill of Rights.

Or else it won't be America any more.

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